Critics reviews

Like fireworks, Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel, a long-gestating James Cameron production, is bracing, a multi-patterned eruption scattered across a broad sky.

Alita sums up the possibilities of combining stereoscopy and advanced visual effects to meet both narrative and aesthetic future-facing aims. However, Hollywood has a way to go before it can truly shine light on the potential for diverse bodies and new action heroes.

As spectacle, the film is aces. It welds Rodriguez’s eccentric touch with action and special effects to Cameron’s mastery of world-building. . . . [Alita’s] arc should progress like a three-stage rocket, but it doesn’t attain liftoff, because it’s bonded to a by-now commonplace vision of a menacing future.

However sincere and earnest their alliance may be, the movie itself tells a different tale: Cameron’s sensibility wins, hands down. Not only does Rodriguez give up most of the fun, but Cameron also runs away with the substance.

It remains a lumbering blockbuster with more spectacle than soul. One wonders what will it take for both Rodriguez and Cameron to rediscover the proficiency and economy of spirit that made their first works so impactful.

A pileup of clichés in service to technological whiz-bangery, “Alita” is one more story of the not quite human brought to life with hubris and bleeding-edge science.

Doing away with the forced humor and slapdash style that’s weighed down so many of his films, Robert Rodriguez turns in a work of unexpected focus.